“I will tear myself away from this place before the week is out,” he said, with resolution that made the words a vow; “’tis too bright, too beautiful, too happy, and is dangerous as Armida’s garden for the man who would fain serve apprenticeship to the Muses.” CHAPTER III. LEFT ALONE. WHILE Mr. Jerningham dawdled away existence among the woods and hills of Berkshire, his wife’s life was marked by changes more eventful, and ruffled by deeper passions. To Lucy Alford the lady of River Lawn had shown herself a kind and generous friend. Not long had the poor child enjoyed the luxurious quiet of the Hampton villa when she was suddenly summoned away from it. Mr. Desmond had managed her father’s affairs and pacified her father’s creditors; with what pecuniary sacrifice was only known to himself. But a sterner gaoler than the warder of Whitecross Street lay in wait for Lucy’s father, ready to stretch forth the icy hand that was to arrest that battered and broken wayfarer. Debts and difficulties, disappointments and humiliations, with constant habits of inebriation, had done their fatal work for Tristram Alford. ’Twas but a poor wreck of humanity which emerged from the dreary city prison, when Laurence told his old tutor that he was free. The old man had suffered from one paralytic seizure long ago, in his better days of private tutorship. He had a second seizure in the Whitecross Street ward, but made light of the attack; and although he knew himself to be a wreck, was happily unconscious how near was the hour of his sinking. Lucy returned to the dreary Islington lodgings, to find her father strangely, nay, indeed, alarmingly, altered. She wrote to Mrs. Jerningham to tell her fears, and Emily made haste to send a physician to see the invalid. The physician shook his head despondently, but recommended rest and change of air. These, with the aid of Mrs. Jerningham’s ample purse, were easily procured, and Lucy and her father were despatched to Ventnor. Laurence saw the physician, and asked for a candid opinion upon Tristram Alford’s state. “The man is a habitual drunkard,” replied the doctor, “and has evidently been killing himself with brandy for the last ten years. If you take the brandy-bottle away from him, he will die; if you let him go on drinking, he will die. The case is beyond a cure. The man’s brain is alcoholized. His next attack must be fatal.”